Leveraging Informatics to Boost Local Pathology: How … · Leveraging Informatics to Boost Local...

Leveraging Informatics to Boost Local Pathology:

How We Interface with Epic's EMR and Psyche to Monitor Client Service in Real Time

Julie Williams, MT(ASCP)

Director of IT Pathologists Diagnostic Laboratory, P.A.

Winston-Salem, NC

• Evolution of one large, successful interface project with greater than 60 clients on one interface

• The background of the players in this project • The build and design • The implementation and daily monitoring • The future • How this project has given our local pathology

group a “golden” opportunity in the market.

The Players

Novant

Pathologists Diagnostic Lab

Psyche

Epic

History Lesson: My Background

The 1980’s

First hospital lab software conversions

Forsyth Memorial Hospital Medical Technology Class

The 80’s continued

1986 Forsyth Cerner’s

21st client

1988 RHD Dallas

Cerner

1989 Forsyth Pathology on

Cerner

The 1990’s

The Computer Age

Athens, GA

Shadowfax Farm *Meanwhile back in NC, Novant Health was formed in 1997 merging Winston-Salem and Charlotte area hospitals, including Forsyth Medical Center.

The 2000’s

Interfaces

Novant Health, Winston-Salem

Time to catch up

2002 Cerner Classic

2007 Cerner

Millennium

2008 Pathologists Diagnostic Laboratory

Interfaces in 2008

• Pathologists Diagnostic Laboratory had interfaces with Novant and PSA billing

• No client interfaces and a list of clients that

were ready for interfaces with their EMR’s

• Let the work begin!

2008 - Current Day Three major commercial labs are located within 45 minutes of Winston-Salem.

The Players

Novant

Pathologists Diagnostic Lab

Psyche

Epic

Pathologists Diagnostic Laboratory

• Anatomic Pathology, Flow Cytometry and Cytology • Serve 5 Novant hospitals and 2 independent

hospitals • 37 employees

• Pathologists Diagnostic Services (PDS) • 7 pathologists

• Cutaneous Pathology (CP) • 2 pathologists

PDL Information Technology Team Julie Williams & Kevin Lipford

PDL Interfaces today • Epic • eClinicalworks • Nextech • Provation • Digichart • Allscripts • Allscripts Myways • Orchard • Greenway • eMD • Suitemed • AthenaHealth • Modernizing Medicine

• Psyche Systems is focused exclusively on delivering laboratory software solutions to hospitals, clinics, reference and private labs for over 37 years.

• Psyche's software solutions include LIS software for clinical, anatomic pathology, microbiology and molecular labs as well as connectivity solutions for achieving Meaningful Use and fast, cost-effective growth such as Outreach and a suite of EMR connectivity solutions.

• Psyche's WindoPath LIS is consistently the top ranked best-of-breed AP system on the market.

• www.psychesystems.com

It is all about the partnership

Psyche’s role • WindoPath database is remote hosted

• Reliability –working relationship

• Ease of Use – Windopath & Outreach are user

friendly and have met and exceeded our needs

• Development of products – client input

• Outreach and Outreach Manager evolved

Novant Health

• The system has 13 hospitals, more than 500 physicians clinics, outpatient surgery, imaging and diagnostic centers, rehabilitation programs and community health outreach programs.

• Novant employs 26,000 people and has more than 1,100 physicians in its medical group

• Novant needed an enterprise wide software solution

Epic would allow Novant to reach their goals…

Epic

• Founded in 1979, Epic is private and employee-owned. They develop, install and support all applications in-house.

• Epic's leadership team includes clinicians, developers and process experts – people deeply experienced in patient care and healthcare technology.

• The award-winning EpicCare EMR is known for being fast and physician-friendly

Presbyterian Pathology Group

• WindoPath site security feature

• PPG purchased Psyche WindoPath after trial period using PDL’s database

• Team work on Epic interface

• Shared costs

Many EMR projects require that we …

The Novant Plan

• Novant had hundreds of physician practices to bring up on Epic

• Scheduled live dates every other month with 20-30 practices each go live

• Started January 2012 • Last major ‘go live’ scheduled for July 2013 • One interface with Psyche that would split

through Cloverleaf engine to PDL & PPG

Psyche – Epic Interface

• Quotes –shared interface with PPG • Kickoff call in Fall of 2011 • Connectivity • Specifications • Insurance Master for Import • Build Phase • “The Conference Call” • Testing: Unit & Integration

What’s involved?

• How do we manage this interface? • How do we build clients on to the interface? • How do we maintain and monitor this

interface? • How do we handle > 60 clients to date on this

one interface? • Answer: Psyche’s Outreach Manager

Outreach Manager

Psyche: Outreach Manager

• How it works

Setting up new clients

• Add window

Select client, add start date and add to original interface code

Map the physicians

Add external – internal physician codes

DONE!!! That’s it!

Monitoring and Troubleshooting

• Psyche: Outreach Manager

Outreach Manager: HL7

Outreach Manager: HL7 parsed

Novant Epic Ambulatory Stats

• 352 clinics live on PM (1461 Providers) • 247 clinics live on EHC (893 Providers) • >12,000 average daily patient encounters • Over 120,000 MyChart users • >4500 concurrent users • 113,912 cumulative training hours • Initial rollout to be completed July, 2013

Lessons Learned

The Positives: • Psyche designed the interface to easily add clients • One day intense “all hands on deck” testing • One interface, one quote for > 60 clients

The ‘not so’ positives: • Training should be designed to include all types of orders,

both clinical lab and Anatomic Pathology orders. • Set up template for testing after upgrades or seek

therapy!

Therapy

Future

• Final Novant Medical Group offices

• Novant Community Connect

• Epic Acute rollout

Summary

• History of the Project

• Build, Design & Implementation

• Future of the project

• How the project has boosted our local Pathology group

Cast

Sherman & Murphy Williams

Happy Birthday Mom! To another year of swinging!

Q & A ?

Julie Williams 336-718-2912

jwilliams@pdlpath.com